Day: 2017-09-10

In 2015, Crackas with Attitude was once an aspiring group of young hackers that sought to hack top US officials such as, former CIA chief John Brennan and James R. Clapper Jr., former director of national intelligence, just to name a couple.

For 23 year old Justin Liverman, just simply hacking top law enforcement officials was not enough. He would go on to harass and online stalk them, he even made threatening calls.

What’s worse is that Justin would also harass and call the families of his victims and harass them as well.

On Friday, Justin was sentenced to 5 years in federal prison.

A British teenager, known as “Cracka,” is the one who actually broke into those accounts by impersonating the officials or employees of their service providers.

Justin and his Cracka buddy Andrew Otto Boggs, who also 23, encouraged Cracka’s exploits so that they could in turn use the stolen information.

During Justin’s sentencing on Friday Judge Gerald Bruce Lee informed Justin that “These are no pranks, this computer hacking, Crackas With Attitude, caused chaos. Your intent was clear, and that was to wreak havoc.”

The most sickening part of this case is that Justin harassed the spouses of his victims and also threatened the children of several targets.

Justin in particular chose some of the victims and personally drove the harassment campaigns against them.

He actually paid out of his own pocket for an hourly month-long “phonebombing” campaign leaving threatening and explicit messages for former FBI deputy director Mark Giuliano who was not named in court documents however, officials who are familiar with the case have confirmed this.

Justin also texted the former FBI deputy directors phone, asking about his “slut wife” and warning that he would “keep a close eye on your family, especially your son!”

Using Mark Giuliano’s credentials, Cracka was able to gain access to the Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal, a computer system that gives agencies around the world access to unclassified but sensitive law enforcement information.

“Liverman leveraged Cracka’s superior social engineering skills to his own ends — namely, to cause disruption/fear through harassment and to continue to perpetrate his online fraud of being an administrator of a hacking group and a successful hacker himself.” Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Longobardo wrote in his sentencing memorandum.

Justin also encouraged Cracka to call in a bomb threat to the Palm Beach County, Fla., sheriff’s office, saying, “Hopefully they will have a shootout and kill each other,” according to court records.

Justin sounds like a delightful individual.

I am no genius by any means here, I do know however that it takes a special kind of stupid to hack and then threaten anyone in law enforcement.

They have superior technology and can find out who you are…

Other victims include Amy Hess, at the time the FBI executive assistant director for science and technology; Gregory Mecher, who is married to then-White House Communications Director Jen Psaki; and Harold Rosenbaum, chief executive of CIA contractor Centra Technology.

And, in 2016 Justin claimed that he had hacked NASA, which NASA spent money on only to learn that Justin was not entirely honest, go figure.

Justin’s whole argument was that at the time he thought that he was was helping expose weaknesses in the private security of law enforcement members who guard the nation’s secrets, and that he was taking a stand against government overreach, according to the court filings.

This may just be me here but threatening these individuals and their families is a far cry from taking a stand against government overreach.

At any rate another member of Crackas plead guilty to his part in the hacks and Cracka, well he is being prosecuted in Britain since he not from the US.

Justin hopes to one day become a black hat type of good guy working in security to help protect people from individuals such as himself.

However, he has his 5 year prison sentence to really think about it and decide if that’s what he truly wants to become once released.